Perhaps you have heard this: The Blue Jackets are poised to capture the imagination of Columbus sports fans. The idea, or the potential for such a thing, has been around for years. Let us think on it, beginning at the beginning.

The Jackets were in the midst of their inaugural season when Jim Tressel promised that Ohio State fans would be proud of the Buckeyes “in the classroom, in the community, and, most especially, in 310 days in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on the football field.”

During Tressel’s 10 years, the Buckeyes went 106-22 with seven conference titles, six bowl victories and one national title. They also beat Michigan nine times. (All numbers are all pre-vacate.)

During roughly the same span, the Jackets compiled a 313-395-33-79 record. Their streak of consecutive home sellouts, which reached 111 games in 2002, was but a faint memory by the time they “celebrated” their 10th anniversary last season.

Post-lockout, there was just one gleaming moment, in 2009 when the Jackets finally made the playoffs. To witness a standing-room-only crowd on its feet through an entire third period of Game 4 was to be reminded of the potential of the local NHL entry. What a scene it was. As a hockey town, Columbus could explode, especially if the Buckeyes slipped on some NCAA banana peel. That was the thinking.

Much has changed since the onset of the Great Recession. The Jackets reverted to being an ill-defined mass of mediocrity on the ice. Season-ticket holders who stayed through Doug MacLean’s empty promises finally removed their discretionary income from the enterprise. Ownership revealed that a new lease agreement was required to stabilize the franchise, and the thought of relocation, once inconceivable, was suddenly fathomable.

Some Ohio State fans almost reveled in this, saying that Columbus was not a hockey town, and to let the Jackets go.

Now, there is a new arena lease in the offing and ownership has stepped forward and invested in an All-Star center and a 50-point defenseman. The team has never looked better on paper, and season-ticket sales are rebounding. Down the street, Tressel has been shamed and removed, and the Buckeyes seem to be tracking toward their worst season in a generation.

Throw in an NBA lockout and what do you have? Hockeytown?

Nationwide Arena was filled to 96 percent capacity through the first five seasons. The possibility is there for the Jackets to recoup the heady atmosphere that pervaded during their honeymoon. But the notion that the Jackets can seize the city is as specious as the idea that Ohio State football leaves little room for anything else.

The Buckeyes are a national brand with a tradition and history that has held millions of Ohioans in thrall, not to mention hundreds of thousands of alumni. All of this will not change in a year. Probably, it will never change. What will change — what has changed — is the size and sophistication of their surroundings.

Columbus has a footprint of more than 200 square miles. Woody Hayes wouldn’t recognize the place. The city has a population of more than 750,000, and central Ohio boasts more than 1.7 million. Among them are tens of thousands of transplants who were not born with a scarlet-and-gray football in their hospital crib.

This is a big, clean, livable city, easily traversed, with a successful Major League franchise, a championship triple-A baseball club, a bustling arts-and-entertainment scene and more good restaurants, parks and recreational opportunities than one can take advantage of in a lifetime. The notion that any one of these things work to the detriment of any other is small-minded.

A healthy and successful NHL franchise fits. That was the original idea. John H. McConnell’s heart, and his brain, told him that a major-league franchise would mesh neatly into the future of one of America’s great and underrated cities. He thought hockey would be perfect for Columbus, and anyone who wended through Nationwide in the early 2000s knew he was right.

I do not know whether, under present circumstances, the Jackets’ market share will grow. I just know it has always been there, it can be revived, and McConnell’s vision will play out. All the Jackets have to do is win more than they lose.

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